Why Did Barilla Pasta Cook Up Trouble with Gay Rights Groups?

Guido Barilla, the chairman of Barilla Pasta, told an Italian radio show Thursday that the world’s largest pasta producer will never feature gay couples in its advertisements. He later apologized.

Apparently, someone didn’t get the memo from Pope Francis that it’s time to be nice to the gays.

Guido Barilla, the chairman of Barilla Pasta, told an Italian radio show Thursday that the world’s largest pasta producer will never feature gay couples in its advertisements. Barilla Pasta didn’t respond to a request for comment from Speakeasy.

“I would never do [a commercial] with a homosexual couple, not for lack of respect but because we don’t agree with them,” said Mr. Barilla, according to the Reuters translation. “Ours is a classic family where the woman plays a fundamental role. … If [gays] don’t like it, they can go eat another brand.”

Here we go again.

Listen up, CEOs and other spokespersons for international corporations: It’s 2013. When you say something controversial to the media that might offend minorities, every outlet is going to run it. And that stuff is going to be passed around and devoured like free pizza on Facebook and Twitter, and people are going to get upset, and other people will come up with clever puns and even more clever pictures, and next thing you know, #BoycottBarilla is a trending hashtag. And right after that come the actual calls for boycotts. That, eventually, will hurt your image and your sales.

Is this news to Guido? Why would he, as the head of a globally recognized brand, risk offending potential customers? Does bigotry burn so fiercely in his heart that he just had to share it with the rest of the world? Just this month, Pope Francis made news when he remarked that the church has become too focused on “small-minded rules” on controversial topics issues like abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

Of course, Guido apologized—albeit sheepishly and unconvincingly. But in his insistence that he’s only seeking to “highlight the role of women” in the family (in a further clarification he made to his comments), he just adds salt to his wounds.

Mr. Barilla went further to let everyone know that while he “respects” gay marriage, he isn’t OK with gay adoption because, as a father of several children, he thinks it would be “complex” to raise children in a same-sex marriage. You see how nuanced he is on these issues? Here I thought he’s supposed to be selling pasta.

How do you say “clueless” in Italian?

In the grand scheme of things, does any of this amount to much more than a bowl of farfalle? Does the gay community really need the seal of approval from every company they may potentially buy products from? No. But here’s why it does matter: the LGBT community has become formidably savvy at responding vigorously to every homophobic comment made in the media universe. Gone are the days when comments like these go by without swift condemnation; overlooking them is in some way sanctioning them. Guido Barilla has every right to tell gays to eat another pasta. And gays, and their allies, have every right to call him out on it, and take their pasta dollars elsewhere.